resources of the colony that adequate lodgment could not be provided. From this, and the difficulty of obtaining respectable supervisors in anything like due proportion, there resulted such a state of things that in course of time the probation gangs were not less a reproach than the penal settlements. The third stage was reached as soon as the convict had given, as it were, an earnest of his improvement. The comptroller-general of convicts was constituted the judge, and it rested with that functionary whether the convict, after a certain period, should receive the boon of a "probation pass." The holder of this was privileged to hire himself out: to enter private service, and make his own terms with his future master. But there were certain distinctions among pass-holders. Those in the lowest class had to ask the governor's sanction to the employment they chose; they had to be contented with half their wages, while the other half was paid into a savings bank. Other classes could engage themselves without sanction, and got certain larger proportions--half, two-thirds, or in the last class, all their wages. These passes were liable to forfeiture for misconduct, and the holder was then sent back to the gangs. The chief distinction between these pass-holders and the men on ticket-of-leave, to whom I shall come directly, was, that the latter were free to roam where they pleased within certain districts, while the pass-holders were retained at hiring depots till they had found employment for themselves; and even when in service they were under the direct control of a local magistrate, by whom they were inspected every month. These hiring depots were at the chief towns--Hobart Town, Launceston, and elsewhere. The numbers thus on pass came to be considerable; and, later on, when work was slack and labour scarce, they grew to be the most serious difficulty which colonial legislators were called upon to face. The last two stages, of ticket-of-leave and pardon, were not peculiar to the new system, and differed in no respect to the same named condition of existence under other rules, except that both were to be gained less easily now, and in no case as a matter of right. I have given now an outline of the system introduced by Lord Stanley's despatch of 1842, and, advancing a year or two where it was necessary, have shown how it was carried out. Extraordinary and deplorable results followed and will be duly set forth in a future chapter. CHAPTER VI CONVICT SHIPS